Title: Outlanderish

Pairing: Lois Lane/Clark Kent

Summary: This was inspired by the show Outlander. Lois Lane is an award winning reporter who seems to have everything she wants in life, but feels there is something missing. When tasked with a story about the discovery on tribal caves in Smallville, she is transported to another world and saved by a stranger. Will she be able to survive in this new and uncertain environment? Will she make it back home? Will she want to?

Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville or the Outlander idea. This is just for fun.

This was started years ago for a friend on Twitter, but never finished.

For K.

Lois Lane dropped the receiver of the phone on her desk. Her sister Lucy had just informed her, in a deliriously happy voice, that she was engaged to be married to a soldier she had met on the base where their father was stationed. They had only known each other a few months and their father had already given his blessing. She couldn't believe it as she shook her head, pieces of her dark brown hair falling into her face. Usually she was targeted as the impulsive one. It had also taken over a year before her father accepted Oliver Queen, her boyfriend, as part of her life. She shook her head again and looked down at her ring finger. Her fiancé, she corrected in her mind. She hadn't told her family about the recent engagement. The sound of her sister's voice, the excitement that rang through the speaker of the phone, outmatched what she had felt only a week prior when she called her best friend, Tess Mercer, about her news. She suddenly began to wonder why that was. What hadn't she called her sister, her father, her close cousin Whitney with the same fervor?

Pushing back from her desk, she grabbed her gray blazer and headed for the elevator. When she entered she hit the button for the 22nd floor and mindlessly made her way from the elevator to the separate stairway that led to the roof. She made this journey too often she realized when she was standing by ledge and ten minutes had already gone by. She looked out over the skyline of Metropolis and let out a deep sigh. She had everything she could, and thought she did, want. She was an award winning journalist, her Kerth and Pulitzer awards on display to signify her achievements. She has a crazy rich and hot boyfriend, who now was her fiancé. And yet, she felt something was missing. She had travelled the world, met different people from wonderful places and learned and wrote of their cultures. She had had so many wonderful experiences that she felt guilty for feeling incomplete.

She sighed again. What was wrong with her?

The buzzing from her jacket pocket brought her back to reality. She pulled out her phone and swiped the screen open, seeing the text messages her photographer had been sending her.

-The Chief is looking for you.

-Where are you?

-He's about to blow a gasket.

-He keeps screaming Great Caesar's Ghost. You better get here.

-Lois?

Closing the screen and placing her phone back in her pocket, Lois's six inch heels moved across the cement with great speed. While she had been up on the roof contemplating the mysterious emptiness in her life, it was her job that helped fill the void. She smirked as she thought about the advice given to her by her mentor in college, "Bury your heartache in your job, Lane. The readers will feel it." Hoping that the editor in chief, Perry White, was flying off the handle because of a breaking story she hurried her steps down the stairwell, not bothering with the elevator. She pushed the door open to the floor with Perry's office. Her shoes clicked across the floor hastily, making her presence known to the reporters moving out of her way.

"Where's Lane!?" Perry bellowed from the conference room.

"Right here, Chief." She said raising her hand as she stepped through the doorway.

The panic stricken face of young photographer Jimmy Olsen started to subside when Lois entered the room. The whole atmosphere for that matter did, like a lion tamer had finally entered the cage.

"Finally, I need you on a story stat."

Good, just what she needed.

"Okay, Chief, hit me with it." She said, taking a seat in the rolling office chair and twisting it side to side.

"Underground caves were discovered in the town of Smallville, about two hours out from here. I want you on it."

Her excitement deflated.

"Perry, I get that it might be front page news for the Corn Husk Gazette, or whatever paper they have out there, but why are we covering it?" Really she wanted to ask why SHE was covering it.

"I have a feeling, Lane. I have a feeling."

She rolled her eyes as she watched him smile at the ceiling at nothing, lost in the thought of his great news instincts. Sure, Perry White has a nose for news and could sniff out a potential story, but so did she. She didn't win awards for nothing. She was all ready to counter and fight this assignment when something inside her paused the knee jerk reaction. Maybe going out into Podunkville wasn't such a bad idea. She could use a little time away to think and, while investigating, maybe even prove to Perry it was a subpar story, so rubbing that in his face would be an added bonus.

The room was looking at her, waiting for her to blast back at the chief and make a scene. They were sorely disappointed and taken aback when she replied, "Okay." They all glanced at one another, not sure how to react.

"I want you out there on the double."

Really?

"Really?" She exclaimed. The room settled down. That was the Lois Lane they knew.

"Yes, Lane. Today."

"Perry, come on. Who is going to scoop us? The children of the corn?"

"Today, Lane!"

She scoffed and rolled her eyes more blatantly. She pushed her chair away from the table and stomped her heels on her way out.

"These better be some goddamn amazing caves!" She yelled as she grabbed her bag from her desk and headed once again to the elevator doors.

Two hours later, and in a more comfortable outfit of a white tank top and jeans, she was on a desolate country road surrounded by farmland. Her GPS called it an 'unknown' road and she once again thanked Perry with some added expletives as she searched for the area of these wondrous caves. She brought her coffee to her lips. It was a town without a Starbucks, but she had to admit that the one coffee place in town, The Talon, did make a delicious brew. There she was also able to talk up some locals and learn more about the caves that had been discovered by a development group. Once discovered, they had to stop working until it was understood just what they had found. Rumor was that it was the lost caves of the local native tribe, the Kawatche. That did intrigue her.

She did some quick research on the tribe before setting out for Miller's Bend, the area above the caves. If the discovery of these caves meant protecting the heritage and culture of a tribe, she was all for that. She didn't think Perry needed her on the story to get the word out in a bigger publication, though. This time, she would just suck it up. Maybe there was a juicier twist to this story. She could balk and roll her eyes at Perry White and his instincts, but she had to admit he was usually right about these things. She would never admit that out loud, however.

Once she spotted excavating equipment she assumed she was in the right place. Yellow caution tape and a temporary fence were up around the work area. Pulling over her SUV, she parked outside of the marked off area. She grabbed her bag and began to march toward the worksite. There were chains on the fence and signs prohibiting entrance and trespassing. She threw her bag over the fence and waited for a guard or a dog to come out and investigate the noise. When she heard nothing, she began to scale the fence. When her boots touched back onto the ground, she picked up her bag and looked around for the entrance to the caves. What she found was a large hole in the ground, peering into a dark cavern.

"Good thing I changed." She said looking down at her jeans and boots.

She estimated a seven foot drop and viewed rocks that jutted out that she could climb down about two to three feet on. It seemed reasonable and she had been in worse environments. It was in times like these that she was grateful for her military brat background. Her father taught her and her sister a treasure trove of survival tips. She stretched her left leg down and used the bottom of her boot for traction. She slid it down and reached for the first rock. She slowly made her way down until she was at a height that was safe enough to jump down from. When she landed she looked back up at her entrance point.

"You made it down, Lois. But how exactly are you going to get back up?"

She chuckled to herself, as she once again got herself in a challenging situation, but she was confident she would find a solution. She always did.

She let out a cough as her landing stirred up dirt and dust into the air. She pulled her phone out and used the flashlight feature to get a better look at where she was. To her surprise the first wall she looked at was painted with drawings and symbols. She looked closer, trying to determine the language. She had been in Egypt years back and travelled through caves and pyramids and, while these symbols were similar, this was not the hieroglyphics she knew from that region. Maybe it was the language of the tribe, but then again, this did not come up in her quick research. It was still a possibility, but something inside her told her there was more to this.

She snapped some pictures with her phone, turning 360 degrees to get every surface, but this seemed to be it. Maybe she would travel back to that little coffee place and study the pictures over some of the delectable donuts she had seen in the glass case. Mmm. That sounded good to her.

As she began to calculate her exit, she felt a breeze of cold air brush against her face. It sent a chill down her back and startled her. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Where did that breeze come from down in the depths of the cave? She turned around in another circle trying to determine its origin. As she walked closer to the far right wall she started to hear a faint noise, almost like a whisper.

"Hello?" She called out. "Is somebody down here?"

When she reached the wall, it seemed as though she had reached a dead end.

"Great, I'm down here alone and I'm hearing things. Nothing to worry about, Lois."

Then, she felt the cold air touch her again, almost pushing her toward the wall. Her shoulder hit the cool rock and a light yellow glow appeared on the wall. She was startled again when it began to move, creating a doorway.

"A secret passage?" She whispered to herself.

She contemplated going in, the dangers that she could encounter since she was alone dancing around her brain. Any rational human would file this new knowledge away and come back with a cavalry, but not Lois. Nope, never Lois.

"Now, this just got more interesting." She said as she entered the new passage.

She stood in a room with a circular altar and more writing on the wall. There was an octagonal indent, like a piece or key was missing. The whispering started again and she tried to decipher it. She knew it was coming from the wall, which disturbed her, but it also drew her in closer. It was like it was calling out to her. Once she stood in front of the wall she slowly brought her hand up. She traced the symbols and the octagonal shape in the air before she let her fingers touch the center. And in that one decision, the brush of her fingertips against the indent of the wall caused the drawings to spin around, a concretion of all these parts, glowing together as the circle spun faster and faster until the glow eclipsed the room and all she saw was white.